4 Vital Characteristics Of Great Content Creators And Bloggers

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.” Voltaire

If you want to be a great content creator, blogger or writer, the quote by Voltaire doesn’t give you license to steal another’s writing, as in copying and pasting it on to your own site or blog and acting as if it’s your original piece of work.

What Voltaire meant is that we all learn from the writers who have come before us by reading what they wrote, thinking about their ideas, taking those we agree with on and rejecting those we don’t agree with or wish to use and then we write our own thoughts and ideas down in the form of a piece of content, like a blog post and we actually encapsulate all of the previous work that’s been done and turn it into a piece of creative content that’s written, recorded or videoed with our own unique style.

“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”

If you’re going to succeed as a content creator and blogger, following are 4 vital characteristics you’ll find in these types of individuals and which you may already possess to a greater or lesser degree.

1. Curious - forget about the “curiosity killed the cat” thing. Fact is that being curious is vital if you want to be a great content creator or blogger.

If you’re going to succeed as a content creator, writer or blogger, wouldn’t you agree that you’re going to need a lot of fresh ideas and be able to maximize your productivity?

Marc writes about experiencing something fresh: “New experiences are one of the most exciting acts of living. They simulate your mind and free your creative emotion, thus liberating your thoughts from the tension of a daily routine. Be curious, be daring, be alive! Go discover something fresh.”

I don’t know about you, but I certainly want to stimulate my mind and free my creative emotion so I have more and more practical and stimulating ideas to write about, record and make videos about for my audience. ​​​​​

And you?

About being more productive, in that same post Mark wrote this: “The more you comprehend the details, the better you will understand the process. Thus, the more productive you will be.”

There’s nothing better than knowing that you’re working at the peak of your productive abilities, working on the stuff that is of high value and is going to get you the results you’re after.

And those are just two of the benefits that you’ll get from being curious as you work your way to becoming a great content creator and blogger.

2. Innovative - great content creators and bloggers are innovative. They’re always looking for better, more interesting ways to communicate with their audience and share great content with them.

Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, explained how they started out writing blog posts that would appeal to their target customers.

Problem is, your customers aren’t going to send you the most traffic.

Leo realized that you need to reach “a large audience that could be inspired” and then that large audience begins telling all of the people they know about a great piece of content they read on your blog, and those people read your great content while at the same time becoming interested in your products and services.

How do you accomplish that?

By writing for the people who will influence your target market.

In an article by April Dykman on mixergy.com, Leo explains, “when Lifehacker blogged about Buffer, Buffer “got so much traffic, so many great sign-ups, we kind of concluded that the audience LifeHacker has is going to be the audience that will also find Buffer useful.”

“It’s not necessarily related to Buffer, right?” says Leo. “The people who found this article interesting, they were in the right bucket for interacting with potential Buffer users [and] being potential Buffer users, but [they’re not] people who are looking for Buffer right now,” he says.

3. Perseverance - success as a content creator, blogger or writer is not going to happen overnight. If you believe that it is, you're in for a rude awakening.

​Perseverance is what separates success from failure. When you start creating content and writing for your blog, you're going to face "failure" over and over again.

Perseverance is the ability to keep moving forward despite the obstacles, challenges and even setbacks that will throw most people off and cause them to give up.

Rome wasn't built in a day!

All of the great content creators and bloggers have developed the ability to persevere in order to see their goals and dreams become reality.

She wrote: "Blogging is a huge commitment and it's not for everyone. But there's no question that you can't succeed at it if you aren't willing to go the distance. Which is probably why even most blogs that do launch don't last more than a few months."

That's all great, but how do you actually develop perseverance if you're currently lacking it?

4. Desire - Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, wrote this about desire: "You can talk about all the things good content marketers should do to attract and retain customers – content strategy, content documentation, content integration, etc., but desire is numero uno."

I couldn't agree more with Joe. If you don't have the desire to succeed at content creation and blogging and, as Joe puts it, "to beTHE informational resource for their customers and prospects (or readers)," thendon't bother getting started.

Photo by Stéphan Valentin on Unsplash

"Marketers have to want to be THE informational resource more than anything or anyone else, says @joepulizzi.

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Although Joe puts Desire at the very top of his list because it's numero uno, I've put it fourth here, not to suggest that it's of less importance, but to sum up, after having read the previous 3 vital characteristics of great content creators and bloggers, that you must have the Desire necessary to be 1. Curious, to look for ways to 2. Innovate and to 3. Persevere.

Now it's your turn. I would love to know what you think? What other characteristics of great content creators and bloggers would you like to share with me?

I want to hear from you, so please share your view and feedback in the comments section below because you're a generous person.

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